NVIDIA to announce Volta (or Ampere) powered GTX 2080 in April

NVIDIA’s 10-series cards are already miles ahead of AMD, thanks to the underwhelming performance on Vega’s behalf. Now according to rumors, the Volta/Ampere based NVIDIA GTX 2080 is ready for launch and it’s going to happen in April.

Ampere not Volta

As per Reuters, the refreshed Pascal architecture will indeed be called Ampere and not Volta. It’s been two years since the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 were revealed in Austin, Texas. So, the time most certainly seems right.

These new rumors surfaced on German site 3DCenter, teasing that TSMC has stopped production of GP102, the GPU that powers the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. This would imply that current-gen GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN X graphics cards supply will dwindle to pave the way for the next Volta or Ampere powered GTX 20 series.

NVIDIA has since signed an agreement with Samsung that would see the company making its new 14nm GPUs, which will most likely show up in the Ampere cards. Also, now that GDDR6 is ready, we’ll see NVIDIA use the super-fast new VRAM technology in their next flagship video-cards.

We expect the Ampere cards to be 30-50% faster than it’s predecessors. The architecture won’t see any significant changes, except the jump from 16nm to 14. The inclusion of GDDR6 memory should have an impact, and the 14nm node should allow higher clocks with cooler thermals.

Next to the Name Ampere, there now is a second name surfacing. However, more importantly, it again is an indication that a new gaming GPU is to be announced next month, likely at GTC in March or April. As reported on Reuters:

Analysts also say Nvidia’s competitive advantage is only likely to increase when it moves its Volta chip architecture, launched last year and only currently present in data-center GPUs, into gaming chips later this year. The new GPU gaming chip, code-named Turing, is expected to be unveiled next month. Even without it, Nvidia’s revenue from gaming rose 29 percent to $1.74 billion in the fourth quarter, accounting for more than half of its total revenue.

Turing sounds more related to AI products (Turing test for artificial intelligence). A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Despite its simplicity, the machine can simulate ANY computer algorithm, no matter how complicated it is. Sounds like a useful device, right?

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